1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a system for measuring and analyzing ocular temperature, a receiving analyzer, and methods thereof, and particularly, to a system, an analyzer and methods for analyzing and determining ocular surface temperatures.
2. Description of Related Art
Ocular surface temperatures reflect the current statuses of various muscles and tissue layers of an eyeball, and hence, they can be deemed as an important index representing ocular health or some eye diseases. When there is ocular inflammation or ill-sustained accommodation (e.g. spasms) for eye muscles, the ocular surface temperature may rise. For example, pseudo-myopia or myopia happens when the ciliary muscles enter a state of spasm so that the ocular surface temperature gets higher. However, as to a dry-eyes patient, when his eyelids are closed and open, tears flowing into his eyeball surfaces get less so that the ocular surface temperature may fall. Therefore, the increase and decrease in the ocular surface temperature can be used to determine whether an eye is in good health, approaches to have pathological changes or has any pathological changes.
D. M. Maurice and A. S. Mushin indicated in “Production of Myopia in Rabbits by Raised Body-Temperature and Increased Intraocular Pressure” (The Lancet; Nov. 26, 1966, pp. 1160-1162) as follows: When the body temperature of a young rabbit raised to 41-43° C. for around 30 minutes, the refraction (dioptres) of rabbit's eye changed to below −0.75. Myopia is caused by eyes with high refractive ability. That is, incident light parallel to the visual axis of an eyeball are focused in front of its retina, and an image on retina is quite blurred. Furthermore, the changes in the visual axis are positively related to the temperature of the eyeball. The spasmodical ciliary muscles may bring the visual axis of the eyeball to be lengthened so as to result in incurable Myopia instead of pseudo-myopia. This paper also clearly showed the relation between the ocular temperature and myopia or other changes in an eye. When the temperature of an eye rises, the eyeball accordingly expands. The peripheral tissues of the eyeball can effectively withstand expansion force so that the expansion is directed toward to the posterior of the eyeball. Under such an inadequate deformation, the eyeball gradually gets longer on its visual axis.
Moreover, Tien-Chun Chang et al. mentioned in “Application of digital infrared thermal imaging in determining inflammatory state and follow-up effect of methylprednisolone pulse therapy in patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy” (Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol; 2008, 246 vol., pp. 45-49) in the following way: Digital infrared thermal imaging (DITI) has been used for measuring the local temperatures of a Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) patient, and it also can effectively monitor and record the degree of inflammation. Further, as Shyang-Rong Shih et al. disclosed in “The application of temperature measurement of the eyes by digital infrared thermal imaging as a prognostic factor of methylprednisolone pulse therapy for Graves' ophthalmopathy” (Acta Ophthalmologica; 2010 vol. 88, pp. 154-159), after patients with GO receive intravenously methylprednisolone pulse therapy (MPT), the temperatures of their eyes averagely may decrease. The decrease in the temperature has a positive correlation with the temperature of the eye before MPT. These papers show that DITI can be used for measuring ocular temperatures and reflect the inflammatory state of GO and the follow-up effect of MPT.
Furthermore, because various kinds of electrical devices have increasingly miniaturized wearable and embedded medical (corrective) apparatuses integrated with such electrical devices have broader applications in numerous fields. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 2012/0245444 put forth wearable contact lenses with biochips used for detecting the concentration of a specified chemical substance in the tear fluid of an eye. U.S. Patent Application Nos. 2010/0234717 and 2013/0041245 and PCT International Patent No. 03/0001991 provide a contact lens with an electrical pressure sensor used for measuring intraocular pressure. However, very few patents or papers discussed a contact lens with an electrical temperature sensor used for measuring ocular surface temperatures. Further, none of the prior arts discloses that a contact lens having the function of temperature measurement is used to determine whether an eye are in good health or has any pathological change.
In view of above, eye treatment or vision correction is in very need of a system and a method capable of determining whether an eye is in good health or has any pathological change. It can be broadly applied to preventive medicine and correctional health.